Tapping powerful customer insights with a small budget
“Oh would some power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us.” Robert Burns
One of the most powerful resources brands have is in the minds of their customers. Customer opinion is what drives all purchase decisions. Even for basic needs; there is more than one brand of salt, customers make a choice based on their opinion. Analytics data, a marketer’s primary resource, tell us huge amounts about what tactics have worked to drive sales of a product but they don’t quite tell us what the purchaser was thinking when they made their decision. How can we get in their heads?
I have found the best way to understand what is in a customer’s head is to ask them. You can, and should, also look at feedback customers provide on their own, like reviews or questions they have asked your customer care channel, but most feedback like this includes extremely limited opportunities for two-way communication. You don’t get to have a conversation with them about why they feel what they feel or get to understand why they chose your brand in the first place. There is an amazingly beneficial approach for getting to this kind of deep insight, it is tried and true and also evolving. It is something called “IDIs” or in-depth interviews. If you asked any of the brands I’ve worked with they would tell you this is my favorite thing to do with a brand. It’s my favorite because the insights gained by doing them are so ridiculously valuable. And, you sometimes develop some super-deep customer relationships to boot—sometimes you can even go back to the same consumers over time for a second dip.
What are IDIs?
An IDI is a long conversation with individuals who are highly aligned with your brand. They may be customers or non-customers who are consistent with your target personas. You set up individual meetings of 60-90 minutes with participants. These meetings have some similarities with focus groups, the main difference being there is only one participant. This one-to-one setup allows for much deeper discussions about personal brand and product preferences and motivations. To ensure consistent discussions and insights across a series of discussions it is necessary to prepare something called a ‘Discussion Guide’ beforehand that is used to guide every IDI conversation. This Discussion Guide is essentially a script. I recommend planning to do eight to 12 interviews. At some point in that range, you start to hear the same information over and over again. The higher end is more for brands that want an even representation across different types of customers, such as customers from different regions or who use particular types of a brand’s products. Many brands can get by with the lower number. It is also important that the person conducting the interview, known as the moderator, be seen as impartial by the IDI subject. So, the moderator should not be the company founder, for example. Subjects will be more likely to try to tell you what they think you want to hear if they know you own the company, and this isn’t what you want. You want their real feelings, good or bad.
Why are they so valuable?
They’re real. Once the participant gets comfortable, and this is where the skill and experience of the moderator is critical, your customers will tell you just what they are thinking when they choose to buy your product. And, when they don’t buy it. What they like about how your product performs, and what they wish were different. They will also tell you what other brands they love and why. And, very often, they will give you new product ideas you had never thought of. Lots of times what they tell you will confirm something you already thought but weren’t certain of and very frequently they will give you invaluable new product ideas.
How to conduct IDIs.
There are a few ways this can be done. First, be aware that there is a spectrum of how this type of research can be done. On one end, larger companies with substantial budgets can hire professional research organizations who have deep, deep experience in conducting consumer/customer research in a bullet-proof way. Usually, this level of research includes professional screening of multiple candidates to find just the right representatives of your target group. Traditionally, this research is conducted in person in a couple of different cities in a research facility where you, the client, sit in a back room behind a one-way mirror and watch the interviews firsthand. (And, there is always an unlimited supply of M&Ms available.) The participants are paid a stipend of perhaps $150 each. The total cost of everything may be in the $40-60k range. I have managed many such programs for my brands and 100% of the time what we learned was completely worth it.
But, small companies and early-stage startups do not have this kind of money to spend on marketing research.
I learned this the hard way with one startup I worked with. I knew that IDIs would provide the insights we needed but there just wasn’t the budget to do it the traditional way. So, I re-imagined the approach to one that would fit with the micro-budget of an early-stage startup. I have now executed the micro-budget IDI approach for a number of brands and the insights gained are every bit as valuable as the major-budget approach I used to use. The key differences between the micro- and major- approaches are in the execution. With the micro version, the same type of Discussion Guide is created. Still, all the interviews are conducted remotely and recorded, the pool of participants is drawn from existing customers or a contact list the brand already has, participants are not paid (though usually they are given some type of thank you gift from the brand). The moderator is not a professional moderator but a consultant for the brand (i.e., someone like me.) The most significant departure from the traditional research is the fact that the participants are already familiar with the brand and they are not recruited in a blind fashion, this does introduce bias, but this is a reasonable risk since the alternative is doing no research at all and everyone is aware of this bias. The costs for this micro-approach are very low, just the consultant’s fees and the costs of the participant gifts.
Another thing to consider is that it may take some time to get to eight to 12 interviews since you are working around the individual schedules of the participants. In traditional setups the interviews are usually done over a couple of days.
IDIs just never disappoint. They do require a commitment of either budget or time, but the payoff is incredible and inspiring.